The World's Encrypted Internet Traffic Surges Since NSA Leaks

People are realizing how important it is to protect their privacy online in the wake of the NSA scandal

SSL traffic has increased in a single year

The one-year anniversary of the Snowden leaks is closing in, and it seems things are looking promising. While there has been little to no change as far as what the NSA is allowed to do, at the very least, people have learned to better protect themselves while on the web.

According to a new report published by Canadian broadband management company Sandvine, more and more people are using encrypted connections to access the net.

Over the past year, bandwidth consumed by encrypted traffic has doubled in North America, and in Europe and Latin America it has quadrupled, as TorrentFreak points out.

More specifically, in Europe, where the percentage of encrypted Internet traffic was of 1.47 percent last year, now we can see a 6.10 percent. In North America, the percentage of encrypted Internet traffic has hiked to 3.80 percent this year, up from last year’s 2.29 percent. In Latin America, the bandwidth consumed by SSL increased to 10.37 percent in a single year, from 1.80 percent.

Of course, even so, the numbers are low, and there’s still a long way to go before everything is encrypted and before everyone is actually protected from the spies, but it’s still progress. It’s interesting to see what happens in the next few years and how this trend will evolve.